Project 2025 calls for the reduction of national monuments as well

They are a sprawling country with seemingly endless plateaus. The red canyons are sprinkled with ancient rock art and historical sites. Usually non-confrontational archaeologists were so taken aback by their remains that they sued to try to protect the land.

Two Democratic presidents have moved to preserve this rugged landscape by creating national monuments in southern Utah – The ears again Grand Staircase- Escalante.

President Trump greatly reduced the boundaries of these two monuments, then their condition was like that back again when President Biden took office and actually restored the protections of the original sites.

Another change seems certain if Trump retakes the White House. Experts say that this year’s election also looks at a broader question: What will happen to the millions of hectares of land concentrated in Western countries and owned by the American government?

Trump has shown his desire to open up more land to oil, mining and logging. And the Supreme Court, heavily influenced by Trump-appointed judges, has indicated it would like to review the president’s power to create national monuments.

Trump nominees Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch have signed this year that they want to review President Obama. Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument on the Oregon-California state line. And in 2021, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. he announced his doubts about another Obama memorial – an underwater area larger than Yellowstone National Park off the coast of New England. `

“Which of the following is unlike the others: (a) a monument, (b) an ancient period (defined as “an ancient relic or monument”) or (c) an area of ​​5,000 square kilometers under the sea?” Roberts wrote in a statement, and the court refused to hear the case.

And a controversial plan pitched by conservatives as a blueprint for the next Republican administration could push Trump further if elected: It calls for him to the repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906, legislation that allowed presidents of both parties to create monuments for nearly 160 archaeological sites, historic landmarks and other places of scientific or historical significance.

Project 2025 he says the monument law has been overused and public lands need to remain open to a variety of uses – including oil drilling, coal mining and recreation. That is in line with Trump’s promise, if he wins a second term, “drill, baby, drill.”

Although Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the author of the Interior Department chapter, attorney William Perry Pendleywho already served in the first Trump administration, as a senior official in the Bureau of Land Management.

In Project 2025, Pendley accuses the Biden administration of “exercising a vast regulatory empire,” beyond what Congress envisioned, and effectively blocking nearly all “productive economic use” of federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior.

Environmental and tribal groups have expressed the opposite view, noting that it is Trump who is making the largest reductions in monument-protected areas in history and is likely to grant more corporate access to public lands in a second term.

“Project 2025 is an example of what it would look like for environmental groups to sell America’s natural resources and public lands to corporations that don’t care about the environment, the climate, taxpayers, or wildlife,” wrote the Center for Western Priorities. a non-profit organization that has resisted pressure to transfer federal lands to state and private ownership.

Other issues – such as the economy, immigration, abortion and rigged elections – are at the top of the agenda during the presidential campaign, while the environment, climate change and public lands are at the top.

That may be in part because most of the land owned by the US government is in the Western states, most of which (except for Arizona and Nevada) will not be closely decided in the presidential race.

The federal government owns less than 5% of the land east of the Mississippi River, but about half an acre in 11 Western states in the Lower 48, which is mostly managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.

Conservatives in many of those states have campaigned for decades to try to take some of that property away from the federal government, arguing that decisions about its use should be made closer to home.

Environmentalists argue that government officials are in the best position to protect the land valued by all Americans, not those in a particular state or community.

Last week’s vice presidential debate provided a rare moment in the 2024 campaign when the candidates very different views about public spaces he jumped to the national stage.

Asked about the affordable housing crisis, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance declared that “a lot of federal land … is not being used for anything,” and “it could be places where we build more housing.”

Democratic Vice President Tim Walz disagreed. He said the open space is kept like that “for a reason” and that the country needs a better solution than, “Let’s take this government land and sell it.”

Utah Republicans celebrated in 2017 when Trump reversed the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which are about 100 miles apart in the southern part of the state. The president at the time reduced Bears Ears by about 85%, down to 201,876 acres. He cut the second monument from 1.9 million acres to more than 1 million acres.

Trump accused Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton of setting aside too much land to protect archeology and other resources that were the monument’s primary purpose.

“Some people think that Utah’s natural resources should be controlled by a handful of very distant officials in Washington,” Trump said. “And guess what? They are wrong.”

Some Utah residents have welcomed the new Republican nomination and the jobs they say may create lax protections. But about 3,000 protesters, including tribal members, protested the day of Trump’s action. They said the monument status helps protect cultural resources, including petroglyphs and centuries-old cave dwellings.

The transition between Democratic and Republican administrations means a clash of philosophies — with the Trump-era administration’s plan for Utah monuments remaining while the Biden administration’s plans include a painful approval process.

A nonprofit organization that helps oversee conservation and programs in Grand Staircase-Escalante says it’s been a challenge to keep up with the flood of new visitors that have come with the Trump administration’s less restrictive policies. The Trump administration plan allows, for example, the doubling of the size of groups that can visit the monument, to 25.

“This doesn’t sound like much, but a group of 25 people leaves a much larger amount of human waste and other debris than a group of 12,” said Jackie Grant, executive director of Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners, in an email. . “Human waste can take more than a year to decompose in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument desert. Now imagine the impact of 500,000 to a million people living in a limited desert area during the year.”

The party size limit is expected to be lowered in the Biden administration, which is about to be finalized.

Trump’s plan also opened up long-haul roads for all-terrain vehicles. The opening of the V-Road in the Escalante Canyons section of the monument has left the area – under high protection consideration as a wilderness area – blighted by vandalism, litter and more human waste.

That damage came with little of the “economic growth in the form of natural resource extraction” that federal officials had promised, Grant said.

William Perry Pendley, former director of the US Bureau of Land Management under President Trump, wrote part of the 2025 Project that calls for the downgrading of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

(Associated Press)

Pendley, a former Trump BLM official, has been fighting for more state and local control of public lands since serving in the Republican Ronald Reagan administration. He wrote “Sagebrush Rebel,” a book about Reagan’s fight against what he saw as excessive Western control.

Pendley’s Project 2025 calls for the downgrading of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, saying the site should be governed by the landmark agreement that preceded the monument. It would allow greater timber harvest on BLM land, create good-paying jobs and reduce fuel for future wildfires, Pendley said.

I Lawyer raised in Wyoming says that many laws enacted after the Antiquities Act — protecting endangered species and wild and beautiful rivers, for example — create adequate external protections.

Advocates for the Cascade-Siskiyou and other monuments say presidents used their power to create monuments wisely. They point to the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Denali in Alaska as among the many monuments that have become popular national parks.

Dave Willis, a horse packer who lives on the monument in Oregon, has been fighting for the creation and preservation of the Cascade-Siskiyou monument for decades. Trump’s allies’ intention to open the area to timber harvesting is part of a “scorched earth policy toward all public lands,” he said.

“Americans really care about their public lands,” Willis said. “And if someone threatens them, they will not lie down. Trying to destroy public spaces will put you on the wrong side of history.”